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Double Fanucci
Encyclopedia Frobozzica: Appendix C Double Fanucci is an extraordinarily complex card game which has led many otherwise successful gamblers to bankruptcy. Suspendur 11 is the day of Double Fanucci Championships. (Flathead Calendar) __TOC__ Deck The deck is composed of 174 cards divided into 15 suits and 9 face cards. The suits are: # Mazes #Books #Rain #Bugs #Fromps #Inkblots #Scythes #Plungers #Faces #Time #Lamps #Hives #Ears #Zurfs #and Tops Each suit has eleven cards with a value from Naught all the way to Infinity. The face cards are #Granola #Death #Light #Snail #Beauty #Time #Grue #Lobster #and Jester History Legend has it that Double Fanucci (or Fanucci) was invented by the deposed Zilbo III in the late seventh century. A game of tremendous complexity and almost infinite rules, King Mumberthrax proclaimed it the national sport in 757 GUE. This proclamation merely gave official approval to those who had been holding annual Fanucci tournaments since 691 GUE. These Championships, held in Borphee during the first week of autumn, frequently leave thousands homeless. Despite years of research, our team from the Frobozz Magic Appendix Compilers Company has been unable to get a complete grasp of this game. Fanucci is in fact so complicated that some who do not wish to waste the time required to learn the rules simply play a corrupted version of the game, known as Gabber Tumper, or opt for Solitaire Fanucci, in which the rules against cheating are much less stringent. Those who do elect to brave the dangers of Fanucci are immediately faced with an immense deck of 174 cards. This deck is divided into face cards and suits. The 15 suits (Mazes, Books, Rain, Bugs, Fromps, Inkblots, Scythes, Plungers, Faces, Time, Lamps, Hives, Ears, Zurfs, and Tops) each have eleven cards, valued at 0-9 and Infinity. The face cards are as follows: Granola, Death, Light, Snail, Beauty, Time, Grue, Lobster, and Jester. At the start of the game a player is dealt four of these cards, and at any point during the game when the player has less than four cards, he can take another card from the top of the discard pile. Play progresses with players taking one turn after the other, either drawing or discarding a card or using one of their current cards to execute a special play. These possible plays are as follows: Combine, Single-Play, Double-Play, Pass, Overpass, Trump, Undertrump, Reverse, Muttonate, Divide, and Ionize. This is where our comprehension of Double Fanucci becomes a little vague. Doing certain plays with certain cards can either cause you to gain or lose points, or cause your opponent to gain or lose points. Clearly, some plays are to your advantage, while others can be quite detrimental. Over the years, Fanucci players have developed fond names for certain of these plays, and a few of them are listed here. Plays that are to a player's advantage are marked as positive, and the number represents the number of points that the play is worth. Please note that actual numerical values change given the circumstances in the game. Traditional Rules The game itself is so complex that not even its greatest players can fully explain the rules. One of those is that 3 undertrumps after an opponent's discard of a Trebled Fromp is an indefensible gambit. It should be pointed out that to accurately describe the conditions necessary to execute the plays shown above, is completely out of the question. An updated edition of the Fanucci rule book is quite probably larger than even the Unabridged Version of this Encyclopedia. For now, all we can offer the reader are a few minor points. * Fanucci players at the Port Foozle Casino typically play with the Revised Miznian Rules, 7th-Level Amendments, with the following exceptions: No side-handling after an underfunded discard, two draws after a Skybreaker, and an extra muttonation if the conditions of Rule 17.4.1.B are met. * Other Fanucci house rules were adopted by the Fanucci Casino Rebuilding Act of 817 GUE. * By Rules Committee Amendment #493, the game is suspended when one player's lead exceeds 1241, and the game must be replayed in its entirety, except during a Frotz Moon or in a 6-player game where at least 3 players are of Mithican ancestry. * Professional Fanucci players make use of a handicapping system in which the better the player is, the lower his handicap number. Forburn the Wily, possibly the greatest Fanucci player of all time, had a handicap of a mere 0.01. Because this system of handicapping runs contrary to other systems, it is believed that a player's handicap is the number added to his score at the start of the game. Thus a poor player with a high handicap would start off with a high score. * Three undertrumps after an opponent's discard of a Trebled Fromp is an indefensible gambit, and is the only known way to win at Double Fanucci. Magical Effects While the cards have no magical ability linked to the casino game, it was suddenly found that adventurers on the field seemed to be more successful while they were carrying a Double Fanucci stack. They also suddenly found that traveling without them, had a negative effect on their spells, attacks and even their luck. Obviously all of this was found quite by accident and the earliest recorded adventurer who used them in this manner, was Detective Dirk Derek Softly in his first few adventures. Detective Softly was also the first known to master the use of the cards in this manner. To put more emphasis about abilities the cards possess, what makes Double Fanucci especially important for the budding adventurer is the current rumor that decks of enchanted Fanucci cards are being found across the land of Quendor. Weaker cards seem easy enough to find. It is said that some explorers have found that they can even stack four of these cards in particular combinations to generate a magical field effect which can enhance certain chosen skills or abilities. A few just throw caution to the wind and just stack cards with no particular decision on what they will affect. They call this their “Fanucci Gambit”. Some have even been giving Fanucci cards to their sidekicks. The important factor seems to be that only certain suits will combine well with others. Some will even act to reduce the beneficial effects of others. As to the face cards, nobody has yet found any of these so their effect has yet to be determined. There are still many mysteries about the magical abilities of Fanucci cards, that are yet to be discovered by adventurers for years to come. However, one shouldn't press their luck as it could take hundreds of years for the mysteries to be clear to us; that is, if we ever discover them at all. Magical Combinations If you pay close attention to the figure above, you will see that the adventurer this illustration was taken from, had four stacks with 4 cards, with two sets of cards in each. Perhaps that's one of the techniques used by the legendary Detective Softly. As you can appreciate from the picture, we assume that: *Inkblots seem to work well with Hives. *Zurks seem to work well with Books. *Plungers seem to work well with Books. *Rain seem to work well with Faces. It also seems apparent that the highest value one can achieve is 100, regardless of the cards used. category:double Fanucci Category:games